


pray tomorrow gets me higher

by 24601lesbians



Series: under pressure [3]
Category: Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Body Image, Crossdressing, Dates, F/F, Happy Lesbians, It's Cute Dammit, M/M, Makeup, Support, Weddings, hint dropping, positive body image, transgirl gerard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-13
Updated: 2016-08-13
Packaged: 2018-08-08 10:40:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7754500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/24601lesbians/pseuds/24601lesbians
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The last photo is kind of freeing. He can just leave his angsty shit to be developed by some camera-around-the-neck lip ring guy with a cute dog.</p><p>(I had to write this. The idea was too prominent in my head, I guess? So tbh I lied about the series being over)</p>
            </blockquote>





	pray tomorrow gets me higher

**Author's Note:**

> I had to make another one.  
> P.S. It is definitely okay to lean on your friends when you need to, I promise. No one will force you to love your body but you can feel better in it I believe in u. You don't HAVE to but you CAN.

"Patrick, just. Hear me out, okay?"

"You keep watching those Dove videos. You think I don't notice, but I notice." He leans down to retie and knot one of his shoes until it's to his satisfaction. Pete groans mentally.

"I'm gonna keep saying it," he says, resolved.

"Pete, are you done yet?"

He waits for Patrick to look at him before he petulantly says, "No," and lets Patrick lead him into the restaurant. He's not even _close_ to done.

 

Patrick comes out of the restroom a little more relaxed. He tells himself to stop getting fussy over the details: the way his shirt wrinkles on one side from being tucked into the high-waisted shorts, the way the lipstain on the left side of his mouth looks darker even though he checked in like three different lightings before they left. The smear of sunblock on his glasses. He could go on, and probably would, but he knows he shouldn't.

The food came out while he was in the bathroom—it always does—and he settles into the booth to eat and hold hands and make heart eyes that disgust other people. At the bottom of his basket, though, he wipes his hands on his napkin and they drop down to the booth surface, then his lap. Pete is making puns about everything in sight, and he feels himself laughing at them, not just because it's such a fucking Pete thing to do, but because it's probably the most endearing one. He's on a mental tangent he can't cut off, beginning spun out by pulling his hand from his leg because he can't resist the urge to move his glass around and make new rings on the table. The body of it started out with the realization that it's going to be a bitch to peel his legs off of the bench seat in these shorts, a hopeless feeling that maybe if there were less leg to peel off, it wouldn't hurt so much. Maybe it's unrealistic but he feels the weight of grease from sweet potato fries on his fingers.

x

Gee isn't the next one to say it; rather, it's Lindsey. Later on Mikey can tell Patrick that Gee is sad her fiancée beat her to it. It's whatever for now, mostly because in the moment, Patrick only sees how blank his mind is and how awful he is at taking compliments. And hell, practice makes progress, but he's still shit, just making an outward effort. That is all.

He trips over "um"s and "uh"s and a hesitant "thank you?" Until Lindsey throws a pillow at him and threatens him with a second, he feels awkward and has no idea what to do with his hands. Or his feet, what the fuck.

He never feels like this at the Way place. Not ever. Mikey doing things that shouldn't happen where food is prepared with that one guy in the kitchen again? It's not a big deal. Lindsey threatening to put one of Gee's bras in the dishwasher? He can break it up. Getting back to the point, he always knows where he stands here.

He doesn't even know how he should stand, and it's not upsetting him, it's _disturbing_ him.

x

He doesn’t know the next person’s name, just that he waves the hand not holding the dog leash and smiles at Patrick before telling the little dog to sit. He looks a little familiar, but Patrick really can’t place where he’d have seen him.

“Can I take a picture of you? It’s a pretty fucking art hoe thing to say,” he admits, wincing. “But the light is really nice through the tree, and the overlay on your hat really resonates with your whole, like, outfit vibe.”

Patrick shrugs, but doesn’t say not. “What do I do?” Probably not wipe his sweaty hands on the printed skirt. Shit, his hair was untamable this morning and it’s probably sticking out of the hat by now, and he knows his nail polish is chipped to hell from playing last night. _Chips always look bigger in the light colors_ , he thinks regretfully.

That’s what makes him sick to his stomach, the regret. He doesn’t fucking regret it. That’s _nail polish_ , it's intrinsically temporary. The guitar and the composing and the feel of the night is meant to last. He feels ashamed for having to tell himself these things. This is just how Patrick looks. It may have taken him a while to acknowledge that part of himself, but he did it, and deeply he knows it’s not taking over. But all this expectation shit and feeling like people are looking at him (because they _are_ ) make him feel like he’s lost something, sometimes.

“What do I do?” he repeats, looking the guy in the eye this time. His voice might be a little rough from a dissipating lump in his throat, but that doesn’t matter too much.

“Well, how many pictures am I allowed to take?”

That’s a shift in whatever’s been making Patrick afraid. “Ten,” he says. Not too many, right?

He whistles, grinning at Patrick. “Let’s make them count.”

The last photo is kind of freeing. He can just leave his angsty shit to be developed by some camera-around-the-neck lip ring guy with a cute dog.

x

Gee has said it in passing twice since Lindsey told her about it, probably trying to make up for not being more attentive while she’s in the throes of another project. This time is different because Patrick feels part of him shift further into believing it when people say that kind of thing.

Mikey and Gee are looking through photos on the living room floor when Patrick gets there.

“What are all of those?”

“Sometimes Frank goes out and takes pictures. It’s mostly a hobby, but he’ll sell prints at art fairs sometimes.”

Mikey smiles distantly at the stove. “If the pictures that are my favorites are the same as his favorites, he’ll—”

“Shut the fuck up, please,” Gee requests, eyes still on the long lines of 4x6 pictures of various parts of the city. “Anyway, he just takes a day to walk around and find beautiful things. It’s a pretty damn good way to decompress, when you think about it. He has this, I have the baking thing, you have that beautiful piece of art in a case in your bedroom. I mean, it’s more than something to look at, don't get me wrong, but when you get into representations there's not really a way to tell what’s based—”

“ _Gee_.” Patrick throws his hat right before she looks up. She swears at Patrick for surprising her, and Mikey swears at his sister for messing up the neat columns of photos. Patrick just starts to straighten them, then stops just as quickly. “How is…?”

“Oh, is that one of you?” Gee lights up. “Put it on this stack,” she says happily. “I fucking love these.”

Mikey hooks his chin on Gee’s shoulder. “Same,” he remarks. “‘Specially the third one.”

Patrick hums, still slightly confused. He shrugs mentally and guesses there was a reason that Frank guy wouldn’t let him see the pictures after he’d taken them. But in ten pictures, there’s bound to be a good one, right?

“He usually doesn’t do people, just their pets or their shoes.”

Mikey coughs politely. " _Photograph_ is the word you're looking for. Not 'do.'"

“I don’t want to hear it, anything about your ...thing. Okay? Patrick, here. There are really good prints.”

x

That weekend, they’re at a “small” celebration full of guests Mikey invited to surprise his sister. Lindsey and Gee came up with the idea to have a party next week, which might not make sense if Patrick thinks about it too hard, but it sounds good. Now that he’s here instead of just zooming in on the rough-looking reflection in the mirror, he starts getting more nervous.

“I know you can hold your own,” Pete says, kissing his cheek. “I’m going to go steal one of the gift bags so we can blow bubbles at people. I’ll be right back.”

There are so many pretty people. Between Gee smiling at everything while waving her ring around and the number of bubble-blowing guests he hopes to be distracted. Easily.

“Patrick, don’t get caught in the what-ifs.” Lindsey squeezes his shoulder.

He feels some weight leave his chest and just reaches over to hug her.

Pete's barely back when Patrick asks, "Pete, can we go outside?" A couple of smokers are watching the clouds come and go from their spot at the next streetlight over. Pete’s posture is basically all slow-running tension that takes a few minutes to be obvious. He almost has the bubbles tucked in his pocket when Patrick grabs his hand.

"I'm okay.”

“You wanna talk about something?”

“I don't think I'm worthless, I just think there are a lot of ways other people are better. Than me, I mean. You don’t have to tell people to tell me that I’m nice to look at. I just have to make myself remember that I'm bigger than the bullshit sometimes."

"I didn't tell anyone what to do," Pete says cautiously, like maybe Patrick won't believe him. "You just started hearing us."

Patrick tugs at the collar of his shirt, blinking up at the streetlight that he and Pete stopped beside. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. I know. You're not only the better half, but the better-looking half." Pete's smile is brightening his face again. “The burden is yours.”

Patrick splutters and pulls the little fanged "Mrs. & Mrs." tube of bubbles out of Pete's pocket to blow a few of them in his face. It's satisfying. "You're the better-looking half when I'm asleep."

"What if I'm asleep?"

Patrick pulls him back through the door to the party again. “That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”

x

While it isn’t tiny, the wedding's not huge, either. He isn’t as nervous as Lindsey, but as her Patrick of Honor—it was her idea not to use “best man”, like Gee did with Mikey—he’ll definitely be visible. It's not making him sweat like it would've if this had taken place a couple of months ago; that's due to a combination of knowing the details of today and having a different kind of confidence.

He wants to grip Pete's hand when he sees them coming down the aisle, but holds himself still and tries not to choke up too much even though Mikey is already kind of crying.

Lindsey is on the left in a white gown trimmed with black. High collared with a slim black ribbon at the waist to match the black cap sleeves, it meets the ground softly, barely dragging. Gee's is the same way in that respect.

Aside from the lack of a train and the inclusion of black, her dress stops in similarity there. Gee walks with a very white, dramatically off the shoulder dress that's cut to reveal the edge of black lace at the hem. The neckline is dark against how pale her shoulders are, and her hair is pinned back the same way Lindsey's is, with tiny red flowers.

So he waits with Mikey, Frank, and Pete, and he doesn't flip his shit until they've kissed and everyone's somewhere between the garden and the gazebo with cake or drinks. But he totally breaks down on Pete’s tux when he watches them dance awkwardly and giggle on each other, foreheads pressed together. It's the kind of sweet that's utterly tooth-rotting and Patrick is so fucking happy to be here that it bubbles up into his chest. He's alive, he likes his job, his friends are happy, and _he's_ pretty damn content too.


End file.
